Fun fact: a 4TB HDD replaces about 2,744,000 1.44MB floppy disks. (Floppy size based on free space left on floppy after format in DOS 6.22 as FAT16.)

A plain computer illiterate guy rings tech support to report that his computer is faulty.

Tech: What's the problem?

User: There is smoke coming out of the power supply.

Tech: (keeps quiet for the moment)

Tech: You'll need a new power supply.

User: No, I don't! I just need to change the startup files.

Tech: Sir, the power supply is faulty. You'll need to replace it.

User: No way! Someone told me that I just needed to change the startup and it will fix the problem! All I need is for you to tell me the command.

Tech support: 10 minutes later, the User is still adamant that he is right. The tech is frustrated and fed up.

Tech support: (hush hush)

Tech: Sorry, Sir. We don't normally tell our customers this, but there is an undocumented DOS command that will fix the problem.

User: I knew it!

Tech: Just add the line LOAD NOSMOKE <nosmoke> at the end of the CONFIG.SYS. Let me know how it goes.

10 minutes later.

User: It didn't work. The power supply is still smoking.

Tech: Well, what version of DOS are you using?

User: MS-DOS 6.22.

Tech: That's your problem there. That version of DOS didn't come with NOSMOKE. Contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch that will give you the file. Let me know how it goes.

1 hour later.

User: I need a new power supply.

Tech: How did you come to that conclusion?

Tech: (hush hush)

User: Well, I rang Microsoft and told him about what you said, and he started asking questions about the make of the power supply.

Tech: Then what did he say?

User: He told me that my power supply isn't compatible with NOSMOKE.

I have a LOT of Floppies but no floppy drive that works with my current Win7 machine, and my XP one is in multiple boxes for parts... so for now I can only stare at NetWare 4 to 4.2, WfW 3.11 and DOS 6-22.

Smart me made VMs on his XP machine and transferred them to his Win7 one.

I also have data tapes... now that is NEVER gonna work on my Win7 so... anyone knows how it could *possibly* work out?

Also... I got documentation on Compaq servers... those are nice.

AAAAAAND since I’m a huge MIDI nerd... I have a SC-55mkII hooked on the UM-ONE mkII and those shitty cans that I’m gonna switch (hopefully) soon for a nice pair of Cakewalks MA-15Ds.

Also, I’m looking for one of them 5150s because 80s IBM and since I also like keyboards... the one and only Model M.

Anyone can hook me up with a cheap one?

Tried to install MS-DOS 6.22. Was not fun at all. Tried 3 iso flashers in total. The closest that happened to DOS was unetbootin getting bootlooped on the 10 second countdown to automatic system start. I gave up on it eventually.

:\

Alright, so i'm making an MS-DOS 6.22 box on a modern laptop: 80GB HDD (SATA 2), 2GB RAM (rip 9x, smallest stick I got,) AMD x64 CPU (they stuck a single-core 1GHz CPU in a laptop meant for Win8.0, with age it's slowed to around 600MHz effective, so it's more suited to being an XP box but I have no XP drivers...)

I'm not strapped for space at all (I could make 4 2GB partitions with no issue) but should I use DRVSPACE? I've never used DOS-era disc compression (and won't fucking touch DoubleSpace, for those that remember that and its issues) and i'm wanting to fuck with it some.

EDIT: fuck CSM, gotta use GRUB to load DOS...